February 10, 1932

Edgar Wallace  April 1, 1875 to February 10, 1932) was an English writer, and a quite famous one, specializing in detective fiction, and authoring lots of journalism. He is credited as an author of King Kong. Cats appear often in his writing, and here is an example from the 1922 book, The Angel of Terror, in which we find this dialogue:

"I have an aunt who faints at the sight of strawberries, and an uncle who swoons whenever a cat walks into the room." " I hope you don't visit him very much," she said coldly."

Th real story to remember regarding this writer is not his fiction, of which the above is a fair sample, but his own life. His mother was an unmarried actress who left him with foster parents. A few years later, facing the ruin of her own plans, she went to the family and said the boy must go to an orphanage for she could no longer send them money. The family, refused to lose the child, though they already had ten children, and the fostering family adopted him. The only other time he saw his mother, was after he was famous and she came to him when she was desperately poor and terminally ill. He turned her away, with some pittance. He did not realize how dire her situation was; by all accounts Edgar Wallace was a kind and generous man. And I don't doubt that his mother was good-hearted, smart and beautiful, in her day.

Quoting the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Wallace's first big financial success as a writer of fiction came with a formula

These adventures of empire, with their resolute district commissioner, gullible missionaries, child-like natives, and wily Arabs, quickly found an enthusiastic audience, and Sanders of the River (1911), the first of eleven books of stories, became a best-seller.

The same source identifies Edgar Wallace's particular contribution to English literature:

Wallace perfected the modern thriller. Exploiting the crisp demotic style pioneered by the Daily Mail, he wrote sensational, fast-paced suspense stories in which anything could happen, no matter how improbable: a shop girl might awaken from a drugged sleep to learn that she is really a millionaire's daughter (Green Rust, 1919), or a criminal genius might use an army of tramps to hold the country to ransom (The Fellowship of the Frog, 1925). But Wallace was the master of many genres. His books ranged from low-life comedies, to science fiction, to imperial romance, and his non-fiction included a ten-volume history of the First World War.

Wallace died shortly after moving to Hollywood to work on King Kong.